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theSync: The Art of Digital Storytelling

We’re in the second decade of the 21st century and we’ve witnessed a ton of changes regarding our business relationships with customers. Years ago, it was about setting up a website and making it easy for people to reach you by phone first, then email. Today we need to do more.

You need:
o Not a website, but a blog with functionality
o An e-book
o A podcast
o A YouTube channel

So, if you’ve noticed the big guys are moving in the direction of using the web as more of a media delivery mechanism that showcases the product vs. just communicating the product. It’s not enough to offer your products online, but you need interaction involving video, graphics, and music.

1. Use Tools to Produce Your Own Magazine

Tools like Periodical and Creativist can be used to distribute an online magazine to the web and tablets like the Kindle and iPad. Both tools allow you to publish to the web at no cost, and from 29 to 39 a year you can publish to Kindle and iOS devices. Periodical is simple so that you can create your magazine on their site and link to it from anywhere, and Creativist can be used to push great looking content everywhere.

2. Find an Audience for Your Blog

Discovery is the most challenging aspect to content creation. With more blogs, bloggers, and content being added to the Internet every hour, finding the best content can be tough. And for you the creator, finding an audience is just as tough. Glipho is a publishing network that helps you promote your work socially. Glipho is more than a tool; it’s a publishing system that helps you hook into a network of readers that can share your content. You will get SEO tools out-of-the-box to help your audience find you online. The founders of WordPress, though the blogging system was getting too big for its britches; therefore, they created a super simplified approach to blogging in Ghost. Ghost is built for the mobile web and is responsive first, and desktop second.

3. E-Books Are Easy to Distribute and Provide Value

The experts are promoting their services and brands using e-books. I personally read a lot of e-books. Well written e-books are specific, short, and provide real nuggets of value information. The guys that successfully use e-books to promote their products make sure they give enough information to prospects to make them dangerous but encourage them to come back for more. Usually, a user has to exchange their e-mail address for an e-book. This in effect helps the business build their prospect lists. New e-books aren’t just static text. Using tools like iBooks Author gives you the opportunity to ship e-books embedded with rich text, audio, and even video. iBooks Author is available at no cost for your Mac computer. If you decide to use iBooks Author make sure you take it all the way and publish your works in the iBookStore even if they are free. Right now, I bunch of y’all are howling, Will I don’t have a Mac. Don’t fret you can still get all of this e-book hotness. For $200, you can create interactive PDFs that have audio and video using Adobe Acrobat XI. I’ve seen some really slick resumes as well as e-books in PDF format. Acrobat Pro isn’t cheap, but it isn’t expensive either. If you want to stand out you should take a look at this product.

4. Appify Your Presentations

I know y’all love talking apps. Apps are great communications tools but I don’t think we should appify everything. Keep in mind, that Apple exercises the option to not allow apps in the App Store and we’ve worked with companies in which Apple has said their app would be better served as a web application.

But, if you can offer your customers a unique experience, building a custom app in which you can deliver more interactivity and deals is a great way to go. And keeping it simple will cost you less money.

Here’s what you need to pass the Appization test:
• Offer something the web can’t
• Provide a great experience
• Allow people to communicate with your business
• Lead generator

A local company, Fifth Tribe, has developed a tool that does all of this. Fifth Tribe is developing a tool that will convert your PowerPoint presentation into a fully operational iPad app. Modern PowerPoint gives you the capability to embed video, audio, and HTML, and Fifth Tribe as built a tool that brings all of your content over. Fifth Tribe is currently in beta and you can check them out at fifthtribe.com.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”